>And I fully agree with other posters that [markets] is something that>is really easy to screw up, and have devious players make piles>of cash.

It's really not that hard to create a floating market. You'll find
attached to this posting a simulation of a floating market as I
proposed. It simulates 1 trade good and as many markets as you care
to create; it comes with 2 markets. Usage is fairly simple. There
are three commands:

buy <market> <qty>
sell <market> <qty>
end

The "end" command goes on to the next turn (replenishing the market
demand). End with EOF. Here's an example:

Note that the prices float at the end of the turn. The maximum
profit/turn you can make in this 2 market system (in the long run) is
simply:

qty-available/turn * maximum-price-difference.

So, as the simulation comes to you, the maximum profit per turn is
20*15 = 300 gold/turn. Barring bugs, you simply cannot make more
money than that from this market system. And this is exactly the same
as the current situation in Olympia. So this system is no more
"abusable" than the existing system.

So what's the advantage of the floating market? Well, currently, to
maintain game balance, Rich has to keep either the maximum-price-
difference or the qty available on trade items fairly low. Otherwise,
there's the possibility that the markets will be abused -- someone
finds a gate between two markets with a large quantity of goods and a
high profit margin, and they quickly make ridiculous amounts of money.

With a floating market, the maximum price difference can be set much
higher. True, the first persons to trade at the high end are going to
make a lot (maybe obscene) profits. But then the trading itself will
drive down the price and therefore the profits. So there's an initial
incentive to start trading, and to open up new markets.